Page 39 of The Summer Show

I held up my fingers a speck apart. “Little bit. The kids love it. Geese do, too. Given that they didn’t give me any peanut butter sandwiches to arm myself with, I had to get creative.” I reached across the gap to poke his arm. “What did you get?”

“Bears.”

I rolled my head to face him. “What kind of bears? And don’t say koala, because they’re not bears. You can blame European settlers in the 1700s for that misnomer.”

“Koalas.”

“I hate you right now.”

He made another warm rumbling sound that I recognized as a chuckle. “It was brown bears. Two of them.”

“Speak to me of your courageous attempts to survive man-eating bears. Tell the tale, but tell it fancy.”

“I’m not a fancy guy.”

“Then tell me the non-fancy version.”

Across the room, Knee Guy cried out. The medic attending to him shot worried glances around the room like he was looking for a more doctor-ish doctor.

“There were bears. They didn’t eat me.”

“I’m going to need more detail than that.”

Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe it was the lighting in here, but Nick’s cheeks flushed.

“How bad can it be?” I said. “I juggled, for crying out loud. Do you know how many people are going to watch me on television, juggling for geese? Somewhere out there, a guy I dated in college is going to nod and go: ‘That—I taught her that.’ He’s going to take credit for my goose-charming skills and he’d be right. What I’m trying to say is that it can’t be worse than juggling and still be family friendly.” I gasped. “It was family friendly, wasn’t it?”

The muscle in his jaw hopped several times before settling down. “I danced.”

Dancing. That wasn’t so bad.

“Are we talking tap, waltzing, the Charleston? Ballet? Assyrian folk dance?”

“Robot.”

You never know how much self control you have until you’re forced to funnel it all into not laughing. “The robot?”

His eyes were on me, inspecting my expression, probing for evidence of cracks. No way would I crack. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

A fortress of self control, that was me.

“The robot,” he repeated. “And the worm.”

Even the strongest fortress has a hairline fracture. Look at the Hornburg at Helm’s Deep.

The worm placed too much pressure on that crack.

Laughter blasted out of me. Think the light shooting out of Leelou Dallas Multipass’s chest at the end of The Fifth Element. But, you know, out of my mouth.

I slapped my hand across my lips, desperately willing myself to shut up. So he did the robot and the worm; was that any weirder or funnier than juggling? Maybe he was amazing at it. Maybe this gorgeous hunk of fine Greek marble had serious moves. Nobody laughed at Magic Mike, did they? No. They drooled. Audiences all over Greece and the rest of Europe would be drooling over Magic Merrick as soon as the season’s first episode hit the air. No one would edit out parts of Nick.

“Show me,” I said.

His lips quirked. “No.”

“Please. Show me your robot. At the very least show me the worm. For science. I’ll die if you don’t.”

“You’ll see my worm when it airs.”